Into the Abyss (20 page)

“But what if it goes really well?”

He holds the door open for me and then follows me inside, to where most of the safe-house group is gathered around the kitchen table. Their conversation stops abruptly. Angie's eyes rove over the bruise on Seth's face, the mud on his clothes, and then to the trail of dirty footprints he's tracked in.

And she may not be his actual mother, but she still looks as if she is considering grounding him.

“What in the world?”

“She started it,” Seth says with a nod at me, before slumping down into a chair in the corner.

“I thought you two were going to
talk
,” Leah says.

“We did.”

Angie clears her throat purposefully. “Perfect,” she says, throwing one last stern look at Seth before turning to me. “So you've told him your idea?”

I nod.

“And I've told everyone else, so now we're all on the same page.”

“Are we?” James says, frowning. “I don't think we landed on the same page at all.”

I somewhat expected him to disagree with anything I might have come up with, just based on the way he acted toward me before. But I'm a little surprised to see Tori—who struck me as more reserved—agreeing so quickly and enthusiastically with him.

“We were done with this sort of thing, Angie,” she says. “You said it yourself: no more playing god.”

“People come out of retirement all the time,” Angie says with a dismissive wave. She seems much more cheerful, much more confident, than she did last night—though her eyes are still distant, not really meeting anyone else's.

“But what if something goes wrong?” Tori argues. “These are sentient brains you're talking about messing
with, whether for their benefit or not. What if you end up doing irreversible damage?”

She is looking at Angie, but an answer surges out of me before I can stop it. “I would rather be damaged—I would rather be dead—than a mindless slave in Huxley's army.”

“And what makes you think you get to speak for all clones?” James asks.

I don't feel a blackout coming, but I have to move my fingers to the count of ten all the same, trying to come up with a civil answer. In the end I don't have to say anything, though, because Seth answers for me.

“If anybody in this room is allowed to speak for them,” he says quietly, his eyes shifting toward James, “it would be her.”

He leans back against the wall and folds his arms across his chest, but James doesn't say anything to that. I don't really know what to say either; I'm not used to anyone other than Catelyn sticking up for me. And I may be getting more and more used to Seth doing things like this, but I still avoid his gaze, and I turn back to Tori instead.

“Something has already gone wrong,” I say. “I . . . I'm proof of that.” Somehow I manage to keep my voice soft—because I haven't forgotten the way she was so quick to jump at my every move when I first arrived. And because, this time at least, I actually care about not making an enemy. We're going to need all the people on our side that we can get.

Tori's frown doesn't budge. But at least she manages to meet my eyes—even if she says nothing when she does. It
might be a silent understanding passing between us, I'm not sure; I don't know her well enough to read her.

“So, I still vote we go for it,” Leah says, interrupting that silence. “Because she's right: I don't know if things can get much worse than what Huxley's already done.”

“There are plenty of worse things that Huxley can do—particularly to us,” James says. “Even if we did manage to pull this off, what do you think Huxley's retaliation will be? Do you think they're going to give us a medal for helping them see the error of their ways?”

“Of course I don't think that, idiot.”

“I would have thought that you of all people would know better than to do anything to make them angry again.”

I don't understand what he means, but the words make Leah jump to her feet. “Shut your mouth,” she warns, and she looks like she might be thinking of shutting it for him—but Angie steps between them first.

“Enough,” she says. “Both of you.”

James doesn't argue with her; he just turns and leaves the room. Tori hesitates for only a moment before following him.

“They'll come around,” Angie says to no one in particular. “They always do.”

Leah is still breathing hard, whatever enraged her making her face flush even brighter than her wild hair and makeup. I find myself wanting to distract her, to calm her down somehow. Maybe because she took my violent rages away first. I don't know. But whatever the reason, I hurry
to pull her away from her anger and back into the conversation. “Angie said she thought the two of you could write the virus,” I say, “but then we'll need a way to spread it. What do you know about the way Huxley manages to remotely control its clones?”

She grabs on to the question like a drowning person who's just been tossed a life preserver. “A lot,” she says, taking a deep breath and bracing her arms against the computer desk before continuing in a rush. “Huxley has its own secure network, hosted on controller servers spread throughout, and in between, all the cities it operates in. And all those controllers are linked together to provide uninterrupted access to the clones. Think of each clone as like an access point—a node on the Huxley wireless network that these controllers host. Because Huxley had to be able to access them constantly for their mind-uploading sessions. . . . Or, that was the original reason for the extensive network, at least.”

“So if the virus was unleashed on this network, there's a chance it could spread to each of these . . . access points?”

She doesn't immediately dismiss the idea, but she doesn't look especially convinced, either. “It won't be that simple,” she says. “Even if you could somehow break into that network, there are a lot of security measures in place, in each individual clone computer-brain, that this uploaded virus would have to outsmart.”

“It's lucky for us, then, that you're one of those first-rate programmers from Huxley, right?”

She stares at me for a long time, almost as if she is
surprised that I was listening when she said that the other day. A slow, wry grin starts to spread across her face. “I learned from the best,” she says, exchanging a look with Angie. Then she sighs.

“So, I guess we'd better get started, then. This could take a while.”

The day after the meeting
in the kitchen, I corner Seth as soon as he steps out of his room. “You can't avoid Jaxon forever,” I say.

“Actually, I probably could.”

“I know you're worried about him.”

“I still have contacts at the CCA. I know he's fine.”

“Are you sure you don't need to see that for yourself?”

He scowls at me. But then he gets lucky, because Leah sticks her head around the corner and calls for him, and so he manages to slip away.

On the second day I try a more honest approach, and I tell him the real reason I want him to contact his brother.

Because while Angie and Leah are working on their part, I argue, Seth and I should be figuring out other details—such as what we're going to do after this virus has done its job. Because once we manage to successfully free the clones from Huxley's control—assuming we do—that won't change all the years that came before. This city is stained with violence, marred with the fear and uncertainty that's come from living in the shadow of its unpredictable clones. If there is ever going to be a chance for me to live a normal life here, the people of Haven will have to
be convinced of what we've done, shown that they don't need to be afraid anymore.

And this is where we need Jaxon to help us. Jaxon and his mother both, if we can convince them to trust our plan. Because the CCA has the resources, the public reach, we need to help transition the city toward peace.

It seems obvious and worth trying, to me, but the entire time I'm attempting to make my case for this part of the plan, Seth doesn't move; he stays the same as I found him on the front porch: leaning back in a wicker rocking chair with his feet propped up on the splintered porch railing, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up and down over his eyes.

He's silent. So frustratingly silent that I find myself considering how fragile his position is, and thinking about how easily I could knock that chair out from under him.

Almost as if he anticipates that, though, he finally glances up at me. His eyes are just barely visible from beneath the hood. “You're a strange mix of violent cynicism and hopeless naïveté,” he says. “Did you know that?”

And then he tells me to go away so he can take a nap.

But on the third day, all I have to do is walk up to him with a purposeful look on my face. And then this particular game is over, and I've won. “Oh my god,” he says. “Fine. If it will make you happy, I will call him and set up a warm and fuzzy family reunion right the hell now.”

“It would make me happy.”

“Well, you know I live for your happiness,” he mutters, and goes to retrieve the computer.

It takes the better part of the morning and afternoon for him to get in contact with Jaxon, but just as the kitchen clock blinks past five, Seth returns with details.

“Seven o'clock tonight,” he tells me. “And Catelyn is coming with him. Though you probably could have guessed that last part.”

I could have, because I know there is no way she would have let Jaxon leave her behind. And I would never admit it to Seth—I kept my face perfectly impassive at his words, as usual—but for once I am grateful for that stubborn streak in Catelyn. Grateful that even if I don't quite understand why, she is finding her way to my side yet again.

It's a matter of efficiency, is what I tell myself. My brain is a machine, and it hasn't been able to function at full capacity since I saw her face over that computer screen a few days ago. Too much of its processing power has been taken up with replaying that conversation, scanning it for anything I might have missed, for subtle signs that might reveal things she didn't want to say about what she has really been experiencing at headquarters.

Too much of me is weighed down, worrying, again, about whether or not she is really okay without me there.

“I hope she asks you lots of awkward questions and makes this reunion just as uncomfortable for you as it will be for me,” Seth says.

“She usually does,” I assure him, which makes him smile a bit.

He pulls up a map of the city on the computer, and points to a place called Lakewood Park, which they've
decided on for our meeting. It's a small patch of green among the buildings of the Northside Business District, and Seth explains that it's usually frequented only by office workers on their lunch or smoke breaks, so we can count on it being mostly empty by the time seven o'clock rolls around. The only downside is that it is almost as far from the safe house as we could possibly get while still staying in the city.

“That car I took the other day was Tori's,” he says, “and she'll be gone for the rest of the day, so that mode of transportation is out.”

“So we're going by foot?” The distance isn't much of an obstacle to us, but it will take time—which we don't have much of. And I'm not especially in the mood to deal with the stares and commotion we'd cause by running at our full speed.

“We could,” he says, “but I have a better idea.”

There is a mischievous gleam in his eye that makes me want to question him, but then, I don't want to give him any reason to change his mind about this meeting. So I just follow him as he leads me out of the house and through the woods to the edge of town, and I don't argue.

At least not until we start approaching the nearest ETS station. The station that is far too crowded for my taste, overflowing with people eager to start their commute home from work or to wherever else they may be heading for the evening. I grab Seth by the arm and jerk him into a nearby alleyway.

“I don't really do public transportation,” I remind him.
For those few trips I took into the city with Catelyn, we borrowed Jaxon's car almost every time; I don't know what I thought Seth was planning, but he should have known better than to think he could get me on that shuttle. That he could surround me with people who might recognize my face, and then trap me in that giant metal box where I couldn't even escape from them.

“I know that,” Seth says, pulling free. “Just trust me on this, all right?”

“No.”

He laughs quietly, his gaze shifting toward the street. “I'm going to show you a better way to do public transportation,” he says.

“What are you talking about?”

“Wait here. I need to check something first.”

He's gone before I can protest further, and I don't want to fight through the surging crowd to catch him. So I stay, drawing as far back into the alleyway as I can while still managing to watch him. He pushes all the way to the lines forming at the station's entrance turnstiles. Once there, he studies the large screen suspended above those turnstiles—the one that shows route information—before turning and shoving his way back to me.

“We've got only a few minutes to get into position,” he says. It's the only explanation he gives me before telling me to hurry up and come with him, and then he skirts around the crowd, moving away from the station's entrance. And I don't especially want to blindly follow him, but I also don't want to stay where I am; the crowd is flooding back
toward my safe alley now. People are starting to notice me, staring as if trying to place my face.

Seth is jogging toward more open space, at least.

When I catch up to him—after I'm almost sure I've heard at least one person in the crowd whisper the name Violet Benson—he sees the questioning look I am giving our increasingly empty surroundings, and he meets it with a partial explanation. “We have to get to a stretch of track with as few people as possible around,” he says, nodding to the ETS tracks rising over the buildings to our right. “Preferably with no people.”